Kodak: Pay Us Or We'll Delete Your Photos

Kodak's Gallery service, similar to Google's Picasa service, has announced new changes in its terms of service (TOS) which will require customers to may minimum purchases every year if they wish to continue using its online photo storing service. If you fail to make a purchase within 12 months your photos may be deleted.

The new storage policy went into effect March 13th, 2009 and it states "You must make a purchase from the Gallery at least once every 12 months. The amount of the required purchase is based on the amount of storage space your photos occupy on the Gallery website." The policy on its web site goes on to say, "If the amount of storage you use is equal to 2 gigabytes (GB) or less, you must make purchases totaling at least $4.99 once every 12 months. If your storage amounts to over 2 GB, you must make purchases totaling at least $19.99 once every 12 months. If you do not meet the applicable minimum purchase requirement, your photos may be deleted."

You can check the status of your account by looking under the "Storage Status" in the "My Account" page of the Gallery website. This is where you can find the time frame you have to make a purchase in order to keep your photos online with the service.

In all fairness, Google only gives a certain amount of storage with its Picasa service. Anything over, you have to have purchase at a yearly rate.